Meanwhile the United Nations continues adding branches and shrubbery to its merry maze, spawning acronymic panels, working groups, committees and cultivating and enabling the influence of Non-governmental organizations (NGO)s – whom they call “civil society”. I’m not sure where that leaves the rest of us whose organizational affiliations might not lead to membership in one of the “chosen” (?!) groups. Indeed, one might well ask: “What am I, chopped liver?”

I was speaking of the “NGO Branch” of the UN’s Economic and Social Council [ECOSOC]. But there’s another group of 1,300 NGOs whose channel seems to run through a different branch of the maze: The Department…